Creativity of gifted students in an integrated math-science instruction

• Gifted education has been interested in integrated instruction in Korea.
• Gifted elementary students tend to have fluency and flexibility in creativity.
• In integrated math & science instruction, gifted elementary students made highly achieving creative product resulted from critical thinking and divergent thinking.

This study designed and applied integrated math-science instruction to gifted students to enable expression of creative potential, and examined the creativity and creative productivity in the context of a classroom designed to facilitate improvement. Study participants consisted of 20 mathematically gifted elementary students in a combined 5-6th grade class operated by a university affiliated institute for gifted students in Seoul, South Korea. Gifted students that received 8 sessions of integrated instruction did not think of math and science concepts separately but designed the solution process appropriately and solved problems creatively. Creativity tests showed a high correlation between subcomponents, and assessment scores on productivity using a gear Goldberg machine showed that divergent thinking and originality have a significant effect on the production process.